Atari to sell Cryptic studios

Atari's yearly financial report shows that they are parting ways with Cryptic, the studio behind Star Trek Online, Champions Online and the upcoming Neverwinter MMO. The official reasons given for the split include Atari's intentions to release "fewer but more profitable" titles and expand into "casual online and mobile games," but it more likely has something to do with the reported $25 million Cryptic have lost Atari in the last couple of years.

Gamespot pulled the details from the Atari's financial report, in which Cryptic appeared near the bottom, under a heading marked "discontinued operations." The report listed a loss of $7.5 million for Cryptic in the last year. That's a significant improvement over the $17.8 million loss the previous year, when Cryptic released Star Trek Online and Champions Online.

It's unclear how this will affect the future Cryptic's current MMOs and development on Neverwinter, but for now, it's business as usual at Cryptic. Gamasutra report that Atari will continue to fund Cryptic's MMOs until a buyer can be found.

A community representative posted on the Star Trek Online forums to say that "support for Champions Online and Star Trek Online will be continuing as normal, our staff is working hard on their projects and there are no planned changes to the way any of our games and projects will operate."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom stopped being a productive human being when he realised that the beige box under his desk could play Alpha Centauri. After Deus Ex and Diablo 2 he realised he was cursed to play amazing PC games forever. He started writing about them for PC Gamer about six years ago, and is now UK web ed.